This book by Mother Earth News contributing editor Dan Chiras will enable you to make wise decisions during the design, purchase and installation of home-based wind energy systems. Written in consultation with two of the most experienced "small wind" experts in the United States, this is the book you need if you are interested in a wind turbine for your home.

Faced with frequent power outages, skyrocketing energy costs, and constant reminders of the impacts of conventional energy sources, homeowners and businesses are beginning to explore ways to use energy more efficiently and to generate their own electricity to reduce fuel bills and their carbon footprint and to achieve greater independence.

Power From the Wind is an easily understandable guide for individuals and businesses interested in installing small wind energy system. Written for the layperson, this practical guide provides an accurate and unbiased view of all aspects of small wind energy systems, including:

Wind and wind energy systems

Ways to assess wind resources at your site

Wind turbines and towers

Inverters and batteries

Installation and maintenance of systems

The costs and benefits of installing a wind system

This book is designed to help readers make the smartest, most economical choices. Readers will gain the knowledge they need to make wise decisions during the design, purchase and installation of small wind energy systems and to communicate effectively with wind system installers.

CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $19.95 AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

Fruit trees, shrubs and vines are true two-for-one plants. Many varieties are strikingly beautiful — well suited to doing double duty as delicious sources of sweet, organic fruit and as ornamental additions to the home landscape. Backyard fruit plants also tie in perfectly with the growing locavore movement. It's difficult to find food that's more local than one's own backyard!

Learn about fruitscaping from author Lee Reich and his book Landscaping With Fruit. It will help you to grow pretty and tasty fruits in your suburban or rural home. Spring blossoms, summer and fall fruit, and the year-round presence of the plants themselves bring a special magic to the home landscape. Pillowy pink blossoms on peach branches or the bright orange fruit of persimmon trees perk up their surroundings with color and drama.

Landscaping With Fruit is a complete, no-nonsense guide to growing temperate-zone fruit, with information on everything from planting and pruning to pest control and harvesting. Readers will find all the basics of landscaping with fruit — site analysis, climate assessment, understanding soil and sun, plant selection, and optimizing growing conditions. An encyclopedia of 38 plants includes information for each entry on hardiness, size, potential pests, special care and pruning, harvesting and visual appeal.

With just a quarter acre of land, you can feed a family of four with fresh, organic food year-round. This comprehensive guide to self-sufficiency gives you all the information you need to grow and pre…

With just a quarter acre of land, you can feed a family of four with fresh, organic food year-round. This comprehensive guide to self-sufficiency gives you all the information you need to grow and preserve a variety of vegetables, fruits, herbs, nuts and grains; raise chickens for eggs and meat; raise cows, sheep and goats for meat or milk; raise pigs and rabbits; and keep honeybees. Simple instructions make it easy to enjoy canned, frozen, dried and pickled produce all winter; use your own grains to make bread, pasta and beer; turn fresh milk into delicious homemade yogurt, butter and cheese; make your own wine, cordials and herbal teas; and much, much more. It truly is possible to eat entirely from your backyard.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living:
Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending books and products to readers. For more than 40 years, Mother Earth News has been North America's "Original Guide to Living Wisely," creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

From the best-selling author of The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest comes a revolutionary guide to year-round harvests of fresh, organic produce — with little or no energy inputs.

Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that’s taken hold throughout North America. Celebrated farming expert Eliot Coleman helped start this movement with The New Organic Grower, published 20 years ago. He continues to lead the way, pushing the limits of the harvest season while working his world-renowned organic farm in Harborside, Maine.

Now, with his long-awaited new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook, anyone can have access to his hard-won experience. Gardeners and farmers can use the innovative, highly successful methods Coleman describes in this comprehensive handbook to raise crops throughout the coldest of winters.

Building on the techniques that hundreds of thousands of farmers and gardeners adopted from The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest, this new book focuses on growing produce of unparalleled freshness and quality in customized unheated or, in some cases, minimally heated, movable plastic greenhouses.

Coleman offers clear, concise details on greenhouse construction and maintenance, planting schedules, crop management, harvesting practices and even marketing methods in this complete, meticulous and illustrated guide. Readers have access to all the techniques that have proven to produce higher-quality crops on Coleman’s own farm.

His painstaking research and experimentation with more than 30 different crops will be valuable to small farmers, homesteaders and experienced home gardeners who seek to expand their production seasons.

A passionate advocate for the revival of small-scale sustainable farming, Coleman provides a practical model for supplying fresh, locally grown produce during the winter season, even in climates where conventional wisdom says it “just can’t be done.”

Praise for The Winter Harvest Handbook:

"How do you produce first-rate food all year-round in northern places? This is the big question facing the local food movement, and Eliot Coleman, one of America's most innovative farmers, has come up with excellent answers. ... The Winter Harvest Handbook is an indispensable contribution." Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food

"If we are going to create a good, clean, fair food system, we've got to learn how to grow affordable, local food year-round and make a living at it. Eliot Coleman knows more about this than anyone I've met. Here he gives the detailed information needed to make it work." Josh Viertel, president, Slow Food USA.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living:
Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending books and products to readers. For more than 40 years, Mother Earth News has been North America's "Original Guide to Living Wisely," creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

You too can raise meat goats. Small and artisanal farmers looking for a profitable specialty will find that compact, friendly and efficient meat goats don't require large amounts of browsing land, and they can thrive on plants that other livestock find inedible, such as nettles and thistles.

Demand for chevon has increased in the last years, and imports from overseas have doubled in the past decade. The market is expected to grow by 10 to 15 percent annually in the future. Goat meat is the fastest-growing meat business in North America. Chevon is a low-calorie, low-fat meat.

In this book, author Maggie Sayer will guide you through the basics of breed selection, buying, housing, feeding and breeding goats for meat.

Storey's Guide to Raising Meat Goats is a great resource for experienced and beginner farmers.

About the Author:

Maggie Sayer has written numerous articles on animal raising and husbandry and is actively involved in canine and equine rescue. Her Boer goats share the farm with dozens of rescued animals. Sayer and her husband live in Mammoth Springs, in the Ozark region of Arkansas, where goat production has taken sustainable agriculture by storm.

More than 20 projects offer complete plans and instructions for building a wide range of structures that are designed for adaptability and usefulness. You'll learn the step-by-step fundamentals of gen…

More than 20 projects offer complete plans and instructions for building a wide range of structures that are designed for adaptability and usefulness. You'll learn the step-by-step fundamentals of general construction — from planning and laying out a site to do-it-yourself framing, roofing, wiring, plumbing, and much more.
Some of the projects featured include:

All-purpose barns

Equipment or machine shed

Two-car garage

Roadside stand

Insulated dog house

Home office

About the Author:
Monte Burch has worked as a contractor, an editor, and freelance writer and photographer. He is the author of more than 50 books, including Building Small Farms, Sheds and Shelters, and has written numerous articles for various outdoor and how-to publications. With his wife, Joan, he owns and operates Outdoor World Press, Inc., a book publishing house.

The Salatin family farm, known as Polyface and located in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, is one of the nation's premier ecological farms and has been featured in countless print, radio and video media.…

The Salatin family farm, known as Polyface and located in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, is one of the nation's premier ecological farms and has been featured in countless print, radio and video media. Exemplifying local food systems and imbedded community-based agriculture, the farm caught the attention of Michael Pollan in his runaway New York Times best-seller The Omnivore's Dilemma (when Salatin refused to ship T-bone steaks to New York).

Behind the glitz, however, the farm struggles with a labyrinth of government regulations and cultural perceptions that terrorize the antidote to mad cows, avian influenza, and food fears. The solution is simple: allow freedom for traditional food growing and purchasing choices.

This book brings to life, with humor and verve, the everyday conflict between the entrenched industrial food system and the local artisanal neighbor-friendly farmer-entrepreneur.

The third edition of The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home has been completely revised and updated. It includes dozens of recipes, from basic food preservation techniques to jams and marmala…

The third edition of The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home has been completely revised and updated. It includes dozens of recipes, from basic food preservation techniques to jams and marmalades, pickles and sauerkraut and even preserving herbs.

You don't need a lot of time or years of experience to preserve garden-fresh fruits and vegetables. Simple step-by-step instructions give you the confidence and know-how to freeze, dry, can, store and brine the abundance from your CSA share or summer garden.

Grate and freeze excess zucchini; it will be perfect in quick breads and muffins all winter long. Pick up a crate of less-than-perfect tomatoes at the farmer's market and preserve them in jars of spicy salsa. Turn the overflow of green beans from your CSA farm share into tasty dilly beans to eat all winter or give as holiday gifts. Dry mushrooms, make ketchup, can nectarines and make fruit leather.

This user-friendly book includes charts and lists that will help you successfully preserve foods, as well as a recipe section for using your preserved food in delicious meals. With these techniques and recipes you will be eating local all year long.

About the author: Janet Chadwick has been a teacher, and has authored several books including No Time to Cook, How to Live on Almost Nothing and The Busy Persons' Guide to Preserving Food. As a teacher, her special focus was on cooking for people with special diets. She lives in Florida.

Mother Earth News is pleased to offer study plans for this beautiful, energy-efficient home. The traditional Prairie home style has its roots in the Midwest and is easily recognized by the linear horizontal design, roof overhangs and centrally located fireplaces. This energy-efficient solar home design is optimized for its climate and will perform best in colder areas of the United States.

At about 2,600 square feet, this energy-efficient home has a floor plan design which allows it to be functional while minimizing the heated space and amount of construction materials. This solar home can perform at least 50 percent better than a standard new home. If located in the Great Lakes region, the Solar Prairie Home will require only about $600 per year to heat! These impressive energy savings come from a super-insulated shell and high-performance windows, as well as optimum passive solar design and natural ventilation. Add solar thermal panels and you can cut your heating bill by a total of 75 percent!

This two-story solar energy-efficient home has three bedrooms, and one full bathroom with a wise design component that makes it function as two separate bathrooms while saving you at least $5,000 in construction costs. Each living space is situated to maximize the energy-savings; for example, the kitchen is located in the coldest area of the home, because kitchen appliances create heat, warming up the kitchen without using extra energy.

The solar home plan provides detailed information on this copyrighted energy-efficient home design, including elevation drawings, floor plan, descriptions of design features, the Mother Earth News feature article about the home and information for ordering the construction-ready blueprint.

Designed By Nathan Kipnis Architects, Inc.

DISCLAIMER

It is your responsibility to make sure that any project you undertake is safe, effective and legal for your situation. All Ogden Publications study plans are offered AS IS for information and entertainment purposes only. No warranties are expressed or implied. By using this information or this study plan you agree to hold Ogden Publications harmless from any damages or injuries of any kind that might result from errors, omissions or other causes.

CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $16.95 AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

We're destroying the planet, undermining happiness, and clinging to an unsustainable economy. Our obsessive pursuit of wealth isn't working. But there's another way. Less can be More. Throughout history wise people have argued that we need to live more simply — that only by limiting outer wealth can we have inner wealth.

With Less is More, editors Cecile Andrews and Wanda Urbanska have put together a compelling collection of works by people who have been writing about simplicity for decades, including Bill McKibben, Sarah Susanka, John de Graaf, Bryan Welch and many more.

These thinkers bring us a new vision of less: less stuff, less work, less stress, less debt. A life with less becomes a life with more: more time, more satisfaction, more balance, more security. When we have too much, we savor nothing. When we choose less, we regain our life and can think and feel deeply. Ultimately, a life of less connects us with one true source of happiness: being a part of a caring community.

About the authors:

Cecile Andrews is the author of Circle of Simplicity and Slow is Beautiful and co-founder of Phinney EcoVillage. She has her doctorate in education from Stanford University.

Wanda Urbanska is producer and host of Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska. She is author or co-author of numerous books, including Simple Living and Nothing's Too Small to Make a Difference.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending books and products to its readers. For nearly 40 years, Mother Earth News has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.